Jenny Was a Friend of Mine

Danny J. Simons | Love Cassandra Goodchild | Quintin Vale; , 2009

Quintin Vale; February 14, 2009

PERSONAL ACTION:

Quinn is going to look up Jennifer's funeral [using the last name Seth gave to him] and prepare to go to it. He will show up with flowers to leave at the grave site and looking generally disturbed. While trying to discuss who she was with any other mourners he will explain that he met her a short while before her death. He will apologize to her family, saying that he really thought she was going to see her mother and would be okay, he never thought Mark's death had her that distraught.

After the funeral he will go to the closest bar and drink himself into oblivion.

Influence Response:

You have a sad, sad day, and a very drunken sad night. Elijah picks you up so that you don't have to face Wright in your drunken stupor.

Love Cassandra Goodchild; February 15, 2009

PERSONAL ACTION:

Allies x2 [Mortal Zine Authors]

(Goal: Make Seth Samuel unhappy without ruining his life, using supernatural nonsense, or otherwise being an idiot about the Jennifer incident... for now.)

Columna invites all her mortal friends out for coffee somewhere, and asks them who wants unlimited hot wings and fried cheese for two weeks. As all of her mortal friends are nerdy underground zine and comix authors, they say yes.

There's only two catches:

1.) All bar food in question must be purchased from the hip new rock cafe known as Helen's.

2.) They MUST hog the jukebox and keep the song "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" by The Killers playing nearly continuously. Every night. As long as possible.

Tip everyone like crazy to keep the staff happy. MONEY IS NOT AN ISSUE HERE. Pansy has $10,000 from which a bar food budget can be gleaned.

Influence Response:

Your allies cheer at the thought of free food, especially at such a snazzy (re: out of their price range) place. They do their damnedest to keep the music going, and are fairly successful, repeating the song for a good hour before anyone catches on the first couple days. Things go a little downhill later on, as the staff starts to catch on to what they're doing (as well as beginning to hate the song because they've heard it too many times). By the end of the two weeks, they get to play the song twice before the staff stops them.

ST Notes: It costs Pansy 300$ all told

Love Cassandra Goodchild; February 16, 2009

PERSONAL ACTION:

ACTUAL PERSONAL ACTIONS I

Goal: Cassandra/Columna is in a messed up mood. They will do a variety of messed up things to cope.

1. [Cassandra] Jennifer's Funeral

If at all humanly possible, Cassandra goes to Jennifer's visitation. (Funerals are usually during the day, but the whole looking at the preserved body in a coffin thing is usually at night.) She wears a black dress and a cross-hatched eye-liner veil drawn on a la Barbie in Neil Gaiman's "A Dream of You." She drags Pangloss along, kicking and screaming if necessary.

She talks to people, friends, family, etc... Cassandra introduces herself as a random five minute acquaintance that Jenny knew after having stopped to eat two everything bagels and a large fruit smoothie at a Panera bread. She lies audaciously for the benefit of everyone, including Columna.

"She had asked to borrow my wi-fi... needed to check her e-mail. Smalltalk occured and we had an awkward, sad, weird sort of conversation about Mark dying and how good bagels are in general and how poppyseeds can cause you to test positive for narcotics and how Avenue Q wasn't as good as the hype. I'd just gotten back from a date and all..."

"Yes. She was obviously upset - a little unsure what to do in general. Getting news about your husband's death on Valentine's day is awful. I'd eat a lot of carbs too."

"It was weird. Most people wouldn't have taken it like she did. She felt horribly grief stricken, but it was a brave sort of grief. Jenny - she mentioned that Mark wouldn't have wanted her to be miserable. She really seemed to honestly love him. They were one of those one in a million couples that were going to be 70 together and still act like honeymooners. She wasn't just realizing what she had had all along, only just grasping at it now that it was gone. She felt horrible because she knew she had it great. She did have it great, too."

"Sorry to be cynical about most relationships and all. I just got out of a bad one. I admit I was a little jealous when I talked to her. I was just... I'd never seen somebody with this sort of quiet vibrancy. She was so... alive in spite of it all. She really hadn't felt alone until that exact day. She'd felt safe the whole time, even when he was in Iraq. Mark must've been a lucky guy."

"Maybe she was lying a little. People lie. I didn't think she was. She was confused, to be sure. She'd decided she needed to spend some time with her mother to sort things out. I feel horrible. I... I mean I'd asked if she'd needed a ride. If it had been me.... I mean..."

"[Not really lying anymore] Christ. I'm so sorry."

If necessary, she will burn her dot of Subterfuge and make hopeful commentary about how Jenny and Mark are together in heaven now... with Jesus and everything. Military people are probably religious like that and she wants them to feel okay.

Going over to look at her, she reflexively checks for an aura, knowing there won't be one. She unlatches Danny's marble from it's clasp and drops it into the casket - thinking to herself that Jennifer will get lonely with only her wedding ring to keep her company. She has plenty of marbles anyhow.

She tries to be as friendly and supportive as she can without edging into the unspoken spotlight reserved for people who actually knew this woman. She apologizes more times than she really needs to to Jennifer's mother.

2. [Cassandra] Bobo's Funeral

If at all humanly possible, Cassandra figures out who Bobo is and gets to his visitation as well. Same get up. Pangloss isn't put under as much duress.

She keeps her distance more here. Bobo didn't deserve this either but the emotional connect just isn't there as strongly. Aside from mourning the fact that the world has lost such a prodigious drinker, she doesn't really know what to make of him. He was obviously collateral damage.

She asks what he was like, and claims to be a friend of the woman who died in the cab with him. She wants to figure out who this guy was before she enacts plans to deal with his unjust and sudden demise.

Also. Did his parents seriously name him Bobo?

3. [Cassandra] Flowers

Cassandra likes daisies. Within a few nights both graves get a supply.

4. [Columna] More passive aggression through music

"Hey WAXQ Classic Rock! This is a request for the song "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" by The Killers. Could you send this one out for Seth? Thanks!"

Wash. Rinse. Repeat until they don't play it anymore.

5. [Cassandra] Street Art

Cassandra slinks back into Elysium after hours and heads by the Lillian Greer Memorial Conference Room. She takes her cheap camera phone and snaps a picture of Svetlana's incomplete painting on the wall. If for some stupid reason the door is locked, she explains to either Elijah or Quintin that she is worried she left something important there. If confronted, she honestly explains she really just wants to see the room, but has nothing malicious intended.

Once she has the snapshot, she takes it home and recompiles it into a monotone stencil, blows it up and gets together a bunch of glossy spray enamel, a lot of cardboard, a hoodie and an extendable ladder. She then goes to the shipyards that Elysium overlooks, and using Obfuscate to lie low in the event that anybody passes by, she re-copies the portrait in black spray painted stencil and adds a large unstenciled smile to it in drippy bright red. Below, she writes the words:

"We alone suffered so deeply that he had to invent laughter."

She then goes to "the wall" and uses a screwdriver to peel back the caked on layers of paint, stripping them back until she can carve letters into the surface. She writes "Viola Loved You" in large ragged letters.

She then starts wheatpasting posters like crazy to promote the CR0TCHFIST concert.

6. Use Eyes of Chaos on EVERYTHING [Columna]

Columna NEEDS NEEDS NEEDS to find out the root cause of Jennifer's death. She observes the bridge where it took, the funeral, the horoscope Jennifer had for the day, the make of the car, anything Marcus or Quentin can get her, the seemingly insignificant things that she just for any reason whatsoever thinks might be significant. Then she turns on her magic brain beams and tries to compile something. Anything that the chaos magic of the collective cosmos want to spit out. ANYTHING.

She draws tarot cards at random, plays blindfolded backwards darts with a composite board made out of the names of all her suspects, looks at the bottom of the unclean soup cups in the sink and stares at the watermarks on the ceiling to check for random images. She is perfectly willing, in her hectic psychosis fueled obsession to spend a day or so going mad over this.

Hopefully the universe drops her a hint.

Influence Response:

1. Jennifer's viewing is a solemn affair. Her mother looks as if she could have been an older version of Jennifer, had she lived so long, but where Jennifer was flighty and dreamy, Marilyn is a tough, down to earth lady. She thanks Cassandra for her kind words, tells Cassandra that is was good of her to come down, and that she need not apologize so much. While Marilyn's obviously grieving she tells Cassandra with a straight face, "You can't predict accidents, that's why they're called that."

2. Bobo's funeral is less solemn, his buddies are obviously doing what they can to keep up the good cheer. Bobo was a pretty chill guy, you learn. Apparently Bobo was a nickname that stuck with him when one of the guys learned that he did a stint as clown for a part-time job in highschool. His real name was Barnaby Boxer. The guys liked Bobo better than Barney.

3. Daisies gotten and laid down.

4. Played, ad nauseum.

5. Done

6. Hint-o-vision results:

While Jennifer was the reason for the accident, she wasn't what caused it. The cab driver was messed with. Bobo was there by chance, not design.

Quintin Vale; February 23, 2009

PERSONAL ACTION:

As was mentioned in the VM to Cassandra, Quintin is going to try to get the security footage from last Elysium. If he is able to he will burn the coverage of Jennifer approaching the gate, and of her getting leaving in the cab, on a DVD. It will be placed in a jewel case and labeled to her. If she provides him with an address before Friday he will drop it off [during the day] in person. If not he will have it left for her at Elysium and leave her another VM with instructions on where to get it.

Influence Response:

Videos burnt and ready for distribution! One important thing of note as per the footage of her in the parking lot: You see her head out, but then everything goes black for about 15 minutes. When the video returns, there's no one in the parking lot.

Quintin Vale; February 24, 2009

PERSONAL ACTION:

After watching the security footage Quintin is going to look into the security more carefully. This will be a longish list, so I'm going to actually make it a list in the order he will perform the actions in.

1.) He will hire a security company to check the cameras, specifically the parking lot cam, to look for any possible hardware problems. Also, he'll call the company that makes the hardware and prowl the internet to see if anyone else has had problems like this.

2.) Try to duplicate the "black out" using whatever he can think of with one level of the security ability [placing an object in front of the camera, knocking wires loose, turning off the parking lot lights, etc.] and compare it to the original footage.

3.) He will be reviewing the rest of the footage from 02-14 looking for a few things. First, he'll be looking for any other cameras that cover the parking lot, even in part [from around a corner, through a window, anything] to see if they show any oddities or changes in the light level during that time frame.

4.) He'll continue to review the footage from that night and try to determine the location of all the vampires he's familiar with when the black out happened. He will be specifically looking for anyone leaving or entering the building near the time that the black out occurred. A list will be made of where people were and what tapes show that as well as who was out of the building. [OOC: I know this might be difficult to find after the fact from players. I'm fine with the answer being that he cannot find everyone one or the security footage would cover all of this.]

5.) This will only happen when no one else is around; Quintin wants to determine how possible it would be to cause a "black out" on the cameras from within the security room and if there might be a record of that. Regardless, this will be included in his attempts to duplicate the footage.

6.) Lastly, Quintin will start pricing security cameras that can be used more covertly, i.e. pin hole cameras and cameras built hidden inside art or common items found in an office.

Influence Response:

1. Security company hired. They find nothing wrong with the system, and are actually pretty impressed with the set-up.

2. Throwing many a light proof object produces a very similar effect to what was seen on the camera. The sound-proofing isn't quite as solid with any of them however. There's still muffled sounds (of the louder types) in the background, while the footage was silent.

3. You cannot find any oddities in the footage from other cameras.

4. With the amount of movement that occurs in the Elysium, it is neigh on difficult to do this. It occurs to you to perhaps question people. (AKA: I have no idea who was where at the time because I don't know what scenes were happening where)

5. You can't do it. The footage still shows the camera recording, and there's a little date and time stamp in the corner that shows up in the footage of anything in the Elysium. The closest you can achieve is outright stoppage of the camera.

6. The interior of the Elysium has this pretty well covered, so you don't need to concern yourself over it. You find some more concealable exterior cameras. $1200 for the installation, ect...

Danny J. Simons; February 24, 2009

PERSONAL ACTION:

Danny calls Bobo's house to offer his wife and family hir condolences, as well as letting them know that if they need anything at all, they should talk to hir and sie'll do hir best to see that it's taken care of. Bobo was a good man, sie says, and he will be sorely missed. Sie asks if sie might stop by in person at some point as well.

Influence Response:

You get thanks from his wife and an offer to come to dinner, which you politely decline, explaining that you have a strict diet to keep to or else health issues pop up. She also tells you when the viewing for his body will be. If you go, you will encounter Cassandra.

Danny J. Simons; February 24, 2009

PERSONAL ACTION:

Danny does some basic research into the Jenny situation by buying a newspaper on Saturday, on the off chance that she'll have been mentioned. Sie is looking for a last name and any other identification information. Sie also keeps an eye out for Seth Samuel's name.

Influence Response:

In the paper is an obituary, giving the time and date for her viewing. There's a nice little blurb on her past, the normal "she was a good person" bit that you find in such things.

There's a short article in the paper about the accident and how nobody really knows what happened.